Well, here we are. Podcastles episode number three. Our first collection of castles.
What did you think?
It was a lot of fun putting this episode together, mainly because the castles weren’t ones we’d ever actually heard about before.
We looked at four castles - Dudley Castle, Astley Castle, Baddesley Clinton (‘castle’ being a very loose term to describe this one but, hey, it’s crenellated and it has a moat, so we went for it), and Maxstoke Castle.
Dudley Castle
Dudley Castle was originally built in 1070 AD by a William the Conquer-ite, Ansculf de Picquingy. It then came into the hands of the Paganell family during the 12th century and in 1138 the castle was besieged by King Stephen because Ralph Paganell, by then the owner of Dudley Castle, had decided to declare for Matilda in the civil war commonly known as The Anarchy.
Jumping forward to the 1300s, it was around this time that the owners of the castle (now the de Suttons), became known as the Lords of Dudley - the very same Dudleys that we talked about in episode two, when we looked at Kenilworth Castle. In 1537 John Dudley renovated the castle and added the Sharington range (named after the architect). By this point the Dudleys were pretty important in the royal circle, and John Dudley found himself first made Duke of Northumberland, then appointed to Edward VI’s Regency Council upon Henry VIII’s death, and finally to Lord Protector in 1552. His rise was met with a steeper fall after he tried to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne after Edward VI’s death.
Well, there’s a reason she’s known as ‘Lady’ and not ‘Queen’, right? In fact, the castle claims to be haunted by her ghost...
In 1937, the then Earl of Dudley opened the Dudley Zoological Society and today you can still go and enjoy the zoo as well as the castle.
Astley Castle
Astley Castle ties in well with Dudley Castle, because it was in the grounds of Astley Castle that Lady Jane Grey’s father, the Duke of Suffolk Henry Grey, was finally captured after his second rebellion against Mary I.
You’d have thought he’d learnt after his first rebellion got his daughter locked up in the Tower of London. But, there you go.
Both were beheaded for treason in February 1554.
But Jane isn’t the only English Queen tied to Astley Castle. During the fifteenth century it was allegedly the home of John Grey and his wife, Elizabeth Woodville. John Grey was killed at the second battle of St Albans in 1461 while fighting for the Lancastrians. Elizabeth later remarried Edward IV - it was this marriage that angered Warwick the Kingmaker, which we discussed in episode one.
Before Astley Castle was in the hands of the Greys, however, it was owned by the de Estleyes. Originally more of a manor house than a castle, it was crenellated in the late 13th century, which is why we decided to include it in the episode.
Well, that and all the skeletons that seemed to be hidden there.
During the Civil War, the castle served as a base for the Parliamentarians, and in 1978 it was destroyed by a fire. Luckily, the Landmark Trust commissioned architects to renovate it and in 2013 it won the Stirling Prize. Well deserved, in our opinion. You can rent it out to stay there and that’s definitely on our list of things to do once this lockdown is finally over.
Baddesley Clinton
Like we said, not really what you might think of when you think of a castle but, well, we like it.
And we love any excuse to talk about the Vaux sisters.
Baddesley Clinton is known for its role in Catholic recusancy during the reign of Elizabeth I, and has three priest holes. Supposedly they were built by Nicholas Owen, a Jesuit who built a lot of priest holes during this period and was tortured and executed in 1606. The Vaux sisters, who rented the house from Henry Ferrers, also used it as a safehouse for Jesuit priests. There are accounts of raids on Baddesley Clinton to find the Catholic Priests hidden there.
If you want to see a raid dramatised in Gunpowder, the BBC drama about the 1605 Gunpowder Plot, you can find it on Amazon Prime here.
The Ferrers family owned Baddesley Clinton for 500 years, and it was in 1526 that the house became the building we can still see today.
Maxstoke Castle
Maxstoke Castle is another beautiful building. The castle dates from the fourteenth century, played a part in the Civil War as a Parliamentarian base, and now owns the table that the Gunpowder Plot was, well, plotted on.
How to visit
Now, we know it’s a pretty tricky time to visit anywhere right now, so you can find all the latest and greatest advice on how to explore these castles on each of the castles’ websites, which are linked to below.
In normal times?
You can visit Maxstoke Castle one day a year. This is normally in the middle of June although, of course, the event was cancelled this year.
Visit Dudley Castle to see both the castle and the zoo, take part in ghost tours and reenactments. It’s normally open every day of the year from 10 am - barring Christmas - although at the time of writing this you’ll need to pre-book.
Visit Baddesley Clinton any day of the year except Christmas Day and Boxing Day. At the moment you don’t need to pre-book, but the National Trust advise that you do. They release new tickets every Friday.
You can visit Ashley Castle by booking a stay via the Landmark Trust.
As always, if you liked the episode then please rate, review, and subscribe. It really helps us out!
See you next week!
- Nikita & Georgia x
Sources
There wasn’t a whole lot of information out there about these castles, although what we did find was pretty interesting. Take a look below at the sources we used - if you think we’ve missed anything, we’d love to hear from you!
R. Allen Brown English Castles, B.T. Batsford Ltd London, 2nd Edn., 1962
P. Crawford, Women and Religion in England, 1500-1720, London: Routledge, 1993
J. Childs, God’s Traitors: Terror and Faith in Elizabethan England, London: Vintage Books, 2015
Nicholls, M., ‘Vaux, Anne’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
Cover Image Photo by Monique Carrati on Unsplash
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